Redstate

In Veto Message, President Bush Will Introduce Congress to Ethical Research

By Mark I Posted in Featured Stories | Life Issues — Comments (22) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

UPDATE: The presidential veto is official. The President's veto message is appended below the fold.

In his response to the State of the Union Address, Freshman Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) said the following with regard to the President’s Iraq policy:

[Previous] presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this president to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

President Bush is set now to turn the tables on the smug Senator Webb when he vetoes the Democratic controlled Congress’s Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. The president vetoed similar legislation, passed by the pre-election spooked Republican Congress last year, and had promised to veto this measure as it was being considered. He will do so today, and in the process, show the Congress the way in funding research that is less ethically challenged.

Read on…

Along with his veto message, the president will issue an Executive Order designed to encourage recent advances in ethically sound stem cell research.

In interviews on Tuesday, two senior administration officials said Mr. Bush would direct his health and human services secretary to promote research into producing cells with properties akin to those of human embryonic stem cells, without destroying embryos in the process. Mr. Bush has said embryo destruction is a moral line that he will not cross.

The officials said Mr. Bush wanted the National Institutes of Health to capitalize on recent scientific advances, including a study published this month involving skin cells in mice, that had the potential to sidestep the ethical controversies surrounding embryonic stem cell experiments. The White House has been consulting with scientists in recent weeks on the plan, they said.

“This is the product of a lot of really hard, earnest work on this policy,” said Karl Zinsmeister, a domestic policy adviser to Mr. Bush who helped develop the initiative. “It is a real sincere effort to open up a new scientific solution to a vexing problem.”

Since the Democrat Congress did not heed the president’s veto warning when it passed its legislation, the president will now show them how stem cell research can be conducted without destroying embryos and without creating human life for the purpose of harvesting its parts. The president’s plan is reported to have three facets.

First, Mr. Bush will an announce that the registry of embryonic stem cell lines eligible for research with federal tax dollars will be reconfigured as the “human pluripotent stem cell registry,” a change intended to allow other types of stem cells to become eligible for federal financing if they have the same properties as embryonic stem cells.

[Second,] Mr. Bush will also order Michael O. Leavitt, secretary of health and human services, to “support alternative techniques,” the officials said. [Third,] he will instruct Mr. Leavitt to come up with a plan describing how scientists and researchers who want to get new stem cell lines approved for the registry might do so.

The registry name change is the most important aspect as it seeks to incorporate stem cells derived as a result of recent breakthroughs in non-embryonic, or adult, stem cell research.

Three teams of scientists say they have produced the equivalent of embryonic stem cells, at least in mice, without taking the controversial step of destroying embryos.

Their procedure makes ordinary skin cells behave like stem cells. If the same can be done with human cells — a big if — the procedure could lead to breakthrough medical treatments without the contentious ethical and political debates surrounding the use of embryos. […]

To harvest human embryonic stem cells, human embryos have to be destroyed, an action opposed by many people. The new studies are the latest to attempt to avoid embryo destruction.

Scientists have long hoped to find a way to reprogram ordinary body cells to act like stem cells, avoiding the use of embryos altogether. The new mouse studies seem to have accomplished that.

By simply changing the name of the registry, the president will put adult stem cells on the same plane, and make them competitively eligible for the same Federal research dollars, as the embryonic stem cell lines so designated by the president when he approved limited Federal funding on August 9, 2001. For the first time, embryonic stem cell lines will have to show some promising results, like the one described above, in order to be funded.

If the Democrats’ goal is finding cures, as they so claim, then they should have no problems with the president’s plan in this regard. The added competition for Federal dollars should drive researchers to greater advances in the years to come. If, however, they are only interested in securing political victories--or as I suspect, in fighting a rear guard action against a creeping public rejection of the sacrament of abortion--then they will oppose it.

There has never been a valid reason for the Federal government to be involved in stem cell research funding, in my opinion. If the research is as promising as its proponents say, there should be no shortage of private money to fund it, with the expectation of reaping the benefits of its results. The facts that states have had to set up publicly funded research endowments, and the Federal government has been hounded to cough up still more taxpayer dollars are evidence of a hidden agenda among research advocates. President Bush is about to call that bluff. My guess is that, disappointingly, the reaction of Democrats and embryonic stem cell research advocates won’t deviate much from their script.

UPDATE: The president's veto message.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

I am returning herewith without my approval S. 5, the "Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007."

Once again, the Congress has sent me legislation that would compel American taxpayers, for the first time in our history, to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos.

In 2001, I announced a policy to advance stem cell research in a way that is ambitious, ethical, and effective. I became the first President to make Federal funds available for embryonic stem cell research, and my policy did this in ways that would not encourage the destruction of embryos. Since then, my Administration has made more than $130 million available for research on stem cell lines derived from embryos that had already been destroyed. We have also provided more than $3 billion for research on all forms of stem cells, including those from adult and other non-embryonic sources.

This careful approach is producing results. It has contributed to proven therapeutic treatments in thousands of patients with many different diseases. And it is opening the prospect of new discoveries that could transform lives. Researchers are now developing promising new techniques that offer the potential to produce pluripotent stem cells, without having to destroy human life -- for example, by reprogramming adult cells to make them function like stem cells.

Technical innovation in this difficult area is opening up new possibilities for progress without conflict or ethical controversy. Researchers pursuing these kinds of ethically responsible advances deserve support, and there is legislation in the Congress to give them that support. Bills supporting alternative research methods achieved majority support last year in both the House and the Senate. Earlier this spring another bill supporting alternative research won overwhelming majority support in the Senate, and I call on House leaders to pass similar legislation that would authorize additional funds for ethical stem cell research. We cannot lose the opportunity to conduct research that would give hope to those suffering from terrible diseases and help move our Nation beyond the controversies over embryo destruction. I invite policymakers and scientists to come together to solve medical problems without compromising either the high aims of science or the sanctity of human life.

S. 5, like the bill I vetoed last year, would overturn today's carefully balanced policy on stem cell research. Compelling American taxpayers to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos would be a grave mistake. I will not allow our Nation to cross this moral line. For that reason, I must veto this bill.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

June 20, 2007.

The president may not be too popular with the base right now. Indeed, his immigration position makes him not too popular with me. That is why when he does things right like this, this, and this, it is all the more improtant that he be acknowledged for it. If only to remind those running to succeed him that the base can be trusted to praise as well as criticize.